[GTO]

Full Reuters Article

Notable quotes:

Suzuki Motor Corp (7269.T) said quarterly profit plunged by almost a third on slumping car demand in India, its biggest market, and Japanese automaker slashed its full-year vehicle sales outlook.

“We no longer think that growth in India will be an uninterrupted move upwards,” President Toshihiro Suzuki told an earnings briefing. “We anticipate hills and valleys, so we need to focus on recovering from the current valley we’re in to ensure sustainable growth.”

Operating profit for Japan’s fourth-largest automaker tumbled 32% to 55.9 billion yen ($514 million) in the July-September quarter from the same period a year earlier.

It now expects its India vehicles sales to slide by a fifth this business year. That compares with its previous forecast of a 4% rise.

[ajmat]

Cue - Toyota moves in to take a significant equity stake at a good price!

[shortbread]

The company has always used the convinient excuse of 'meeting domestic demand', whenever questioned about being a poor export performer. Well what's it's excuse now?

Rather than salivating at India simply as a cash cow, Maruti needs to focus on pushing for exports thus helping its own business and the Indian economy. Currently Maruti doesn't even export 10% of it's volumes. Conviniently the export percentage might rise now due to the fall in domestic sales/production volumes.

The issue is current exports of Indian production is mostly focused on markets like Africa and South America. Hopefully the new safety norms will mean that Indian made cars will be able to meet standards in developed markets.

https://auto.ndtv.com/news/maruti-su...n-cars-1984374